Winter holiday lights, Barcelona

Winter holiday lights, Barcelona

Midnight traffic slows giftward

at the posted throng of colors

curving above the street.

The guested camera

adjusts a partial phrase

to car wheels gone

as the lens lifts.

So the city opens forth

its festive evenings out—

Bright the winter streets, reflections

of a thought that comes and goes the read,

a table set for sharing.

 Diaries and/or  : Virginia Woolf's Modernist Path

Last January, based on information from Paula Maggio’s weblog “Blogging Woolf”, I posted a brief comment about Barbara Lounsberry’s book Becoming Virginia Woolf: Her Early Diaries and the Diaries She Read soon after it appeared. In today’s e-age of letter writing plus, where Facebook, DeviantArt, App.net and a long etc make it easy to get all ten fingers working, it is perhaps easy to lose sight of the advantages of re-considering Virginia Woolf’s diary reading. But on reflection, what do I read? And why. One specific reason why is clearly that constant flow between theory and practice in writing. What this comes down to I believe is authority—or if one prefers, authorship. And perhaps it is a simple step from authoring to mentoring, or self-mentoring. There are many names for the type of writing being referred to here. In keeping with the Woolfian reference, we speak of diary, but also of journal. Many of us feel we are writing autobiographies (sometimes even in our fictions). Where this leaves a person in relation to the e-age is debatable, but as is well known, it is being debated in many places—to the extent even of wondering how far away we are technologically from simply thinking our pieces onto the page while we put our fingers to other tasks. As part of our theorizing and doing, in any case, Lounsberry’s new book follows on from Becoming Woolf. The title is indicative of the far reaching nature of the overall project: Virginia Woolf’s Modernist Path: Her Middle Diaries and the Diaries She Read (U P of Florida). Thus, moving into Woolf’s middle period, her reading of 13 more diaries is discussed. Virginia Woolf’s influences are thus seen to have included the diaries (or journals or life writings—should some e-term be preferred?) of Beatrice Webb, Anton Chekhov, Stendhal, Katherine Mansfield and others. Names to conjure with… In all events I think this book will be a welcome addition for those of us interested in such intertextual and/or intermedial comparisons.

green

green

kitchen drawing as well

metalgleam and cloth

dream parsley in a small glass tumbler

mother in the leaves

go like sunday              no special plans

terrazzoglisten and clothes

turning in the other room

incremental

incremental

short on capitals we filed in

schoolers like any number

any continent                so many

atoms                          hash breathed

marking another notchvoid

and out again               poured streetward

wafting crease and wrinkle on the ward

25.x.16

adhesive

adhesive

two agave varieties against the sky

bean green                   blue green                    yellow

seasky out on the horizon line

skymud                       

beyond the book—a river

Fried tips on dogwhiskers from Bosch to Brueghel the Younger

Fried tips on dogwhiskers from Bosch to Brueghel the Younger

Oaks from up the hill

A clumsy boot drops the blade

Next door is also no surprise                         soft black earth

The half painted balcony                               under the blue green window

Landmark decision yeah                               so count

But where are you now                                 really

Howth

In celebration of summer, 2016!

On a short (six-day) trip to Dublin, Ireland, Montse and I visited Howth. The photos below were taken on our wander along the trail from The Summit to the village. In the distance we could see Lambay Island and Ireland’s Eye, and of course the bright blue waters of the Irish Sea. But the shots I’m putting up here concentrate on the colorful tangle of thicket. The wildflowers (the ones we recognized) are gorse, broom, heather—incredibly stimulating country to walk in! 

x-one

x-two

Centre Artístic Sant Lluc Summer Art Exhibit 2016

The 2016 edition of the Sant Lluc summer collective art exhibition will soon be underway. The Centre’s site is www.stlluc.cat (or by searching for the name of the Centre). I hope people will keep the event in mind and of course find time to see the works exhibited. An external jury selects works from this summer exhibit to be shown in the “Seleccionnats” show in September-October.

The summer group goes in two turns, the first from 8-30 June; the second from 7-30 July. My contribution this year, a small format still life in acrylic, will be shown in the July turn. I’ll be posting more on this as things develop.

Visits to the Exhibitions: evenings only, *Tuesday to Saturday, from 17:00 to 20:00.

Why all the time

Why all the time

A few days ago I went to the opening of the Albarrán Cabrera photography exhibition at the Galeria Valid Foto in Barcelona. Albarrán Cabrera are the duo Angel Albarrán and Anna Cabrera, and as it happens I’d previously viewed work of theirs at this same venue. Both the photography and the gallery continue to inspire me for a variety of reasons, but for the moment let me simply say that both the photos and the rooms they’re in are well tended and well arranged. Then it is important to mention the gallery space as con-text and shared creative process because part of the exhibit’s underlying concept involves ways and styles in which images are rendered—where and how they are presented as much as what they are before presentation.

Both the so called raw images here and their rendering make you want to take pictures in more than one sense. This is often a question of something unnameable or not fully describable in the picture frame. I think that becomes clear in the exhibition notes, along with a calling out of time. “Why all the time” [Por qué todo el tiempo] is the title of the whole series of pictures, a question without a question mark, understandable perhaps as a further fragmenting of what can never be full presentation. I think we need to be reminded again that “The freshest, purest, and newest is found in the simplest things, those closest to us.” This, from the gallery notes, perhaps provides the “raw” element in the pictures, basic no doubt for the part titled “This is you.” Obviously it is you-me-us who in some way have to answer the photographers and the gallerista, to respond, I mean, to the photographs in meaningful conversation.

Such a dialogue perhaps becomes more pressing in the second part of the show, called “The mouth of Krishna” [La Boca de Krishna]. This invocation takes us, as the photographs take us, into a contemplation of differences in meaning, differences in perspectives as they are sought within (and finally, beyond) any ongoing dialogue that eventually comes about. There is, for example, a particular landscape displayed as vertical instead of horizontal. Krishna’s mouth and the things that are blend into scientific myth, along with the flowers, the faces, the bodies that inspire dialogue. The technical aspects of rendering then seem to me to take on new importance, because such aspects are constantly part of the pictures yet not always the first thing to be considered. Valid Foto, importantly, is informative on such aspects. “Why all the time” will be at the gallery until 25 June 2016. Linked by: http://es.validfoto.com/

Sota la Ciutat

Sota la Ciutat

Written and directed by Llàtzer Garcia and performed by the Companyia Arcàdia, this piece—currently running at the Teatre Lliure (Montjuïc)—raises intriguing questions about who funds theater, what gets censored, the role of education, and talent—talent pure and simple. The play basically hinges on the comment of one of the characters, Narcís Munt, an aging teacher/director, to the effect that, rather as in Hamlet, “something is rotten in the Catalan theater.”

The opening scene peers into the lives of a young couple in a provincial town. They are trying to find their way into the theater world (she, Dàlia); or the world of novel writing and publishing (he, David). They struggle, they quarrel. Finally, they move to the metropolis (Barcelona), where everything is possible. One of their neighbors, Bàrbara Bonay, a successful painter and designer, befriends them and introduces them to her sister, Miriam, and Narcís Munt, her brother-in-law. Narcís agrees to mentor Dàlia as he attempts to kickstart his own career. There follows a series of rather bourgeois scenes of quasi-Bohemian joie de vivre leading up to a potential new role for Narcís at “the National.”

Predictably, he blows this chance by showing his outspoken disrespect for anybody who disagrees with him. Narcís is ready, in fact eager, to refuse to be hypocritical. Crisis thus returns. However, seeming resolution comes as “the National” accepts a new performance of his previously successful production of Godot.

But in the end it is curtains for Narcís. For we learn that he has died in mysterious circumstances. Dàlia bravely vows to fight on, nevertheless; and Bàrbara delivers a difficult elegy for the dead director whom her well meaning efforts had previously attempted to Apollonize or hypocritize.

The play ends there, but the questions raised in the course of the action go on. “Who’s watching?” is one of these questions. For the egoistic aspect of art so naturally welded to the idea of hypocrisy is bound to follow us out of the theater. And this seems to me an interesting issue to ponder in multiple hitch with “Who funds theater?” and “Where?” Llàtzer Garcia and the Companyia Arcàdia are no doubt aware of the impossibility of matching Godot’s nada, old or new, whether at “the National” or at any other venue. Yet (fortunately) they search on, exploring well under the city—Sota la Ciutat—where answers are notoriously elusive.

(Sota la Ciutat will be on at the Teatre Lliure de Montjüic until the first of May, 2016.)

Sketch

work in progress.......

Hamlet at the Teatre Lliure

Hamlet

Sunday, 17 March, that is, tomorrow, marks the final performance of the 2016 Teatre Lliure version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Adapted and directed by Pau Carrió, the long Elizabethan drama is slimmed down to a scant three hour performance. So this production in Catalan has found ways to pare down both text and staging to an austere minimum. As to the latter, the multiple gray doors—mousetrap hammers?—on the (usually) brightly lighted stage are all that comprise the set. One of them, perhaps unwisely left ajar, even serves as “arras” behind which Polonius bites the dust. So many doors might be seen as invoking the multiple ways this well known Shakespearean piece can be (and has been) staged. Then there is the lighting, which at critical moments is left on above the heads of the audience, providing a metatheatrical scrim to spice up Carrió’s modern day dress presentation. The mirroring effect of the doors is, intentionally or not, echoed by the fact that some of the actors play two roles, although this could be another nod to austerity. As to the text, the dialogue is snappy, as it must be in a successful Hamlet, and true of course to the Lliure’s postmodernist conceptualization of Elizabethan wit. One may (this one did) miss the Players whom Hamlet convinces to deliver his Mousetrap lines as he baits the king he desires to kill. The absence of the Players is substituted by a reading (as opposed to a “play”). This is performed by some of the actors, providing still more doubling. And the result is of course the same as in more traditional Hamlets—Claudius spills his whiskey as he guiltily rises and rushes offstage.

A play this well known and so often and diversely represented obviously offers many challenges regarding both mise-en-scène and textual choice. One might, I think, quarrel with some features of dialogue delivery in this version. Possibly also with the outfitting of Ophelia’s tomb.  But the shortening of the text as well as its fast-paced delivery are sound. Some tickets may still be available… (link >>

http://www.teatrelliure.com/en/agenda/temporada-2015-2016/hamlet

Annotating Woolf

Annotating Woolf, a conference, will be held in London, UK, on 9 April of this year. Hosted by the Institute of English Studies (UL) for the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, the event deals with the theme of editing Woolf’s writings. This seems to me interesting for various reasons, among them the fact that readers naturally “edit” as they read. And then also while the internet is making more and more texts available, one is not always sure which edition of a given text is put online. So with the aim of sharing, I send this conference link http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/VirginiaWoolf2016

 Coincidentally with this, I happened to be browsing in Moments of Being in search of a reference on the importance if being able to get away from city life and enjoy the out of doors—especially perhaps for children. Yes, it is true that Woolf was fortunate in being able to live something of a Brahmin childhood. Not everyone is so lucky, clearly, but an important part of this is the fact that she offers readers a good deal that brings some of that good fortune within the reach of others. In any event, the passage I happened to be seeking is this (occurring toward the end of the “A Sketch of the Past” section of MoB):

… in retrospect, probably nothing that we had as children was quite so important to us as our summer in Cornwall. To go away to the end of England; to have our own house, our own garden—to have that bay, that sea, and the mount: Clody and Halestown bog; Carbis Bay; Lelant; Zennor, Trevail, the Gurnard’s Head; to hear the waves breaking that first night behind the yellow blind; to sail in the lugger; to dig in the sands; to scramble over the rocks and see the anemones flourishing their antennae in the pools; now and then to find a small fish flapping there… (From page 128 of the paperback version published in 1978 by Triad Grafton, edited with notes by Jeanne Schulkind)

Now, I confess that this is limited nature description. But it gives a bit of a view of Woolf’s poetic memory at work—also scrunched by weblog space limits. However, a chance occurrence, a footnote on the facing page of MoB, broke into my search for more nature description. I’ll mark its location with an asterisk. Woolf writes:

The market place was a jagged cobbled open place; the Church was a granite church—of what age, I do not know.* It was a windy, noisy, fishy, vociferous, narrow-streeted town; the colour of a mussel or a limpet; like a bunch of rough shell fish, oysters or mussels, all crowded together. (129)

An interesting way of speaking of crowding, it occurred. Then again, I think the footnote the asterisk leads to generates a different sort of interest—perhaps also implying a kind of crowding. There, Jeanne Schulkind tells us: “p. 16 of the ms continues: ‘There were none of those rows of respectable professional houses, with carved doors, & brass window long window panes with brass lined blinds.’” And so I found myself trying to work out variations on the text, rearranging mentally those cancelations… Wondering what the new editions of Moments of Being will hold… 

green pepper

Technical glitches

It seems that Google has decided to adopt a policy that keeps people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other Openld providers from being able to follow blogs by signing into Google Friend Connect.

Google is thus removing non-Google Account profiles from blogs like mine, which may keep some of you from seeing what I post without making some changes.

More detailed information on all of this is available through Blogger Help and in other spots on the web. In any case, if I make any changes of my own accord, I'll post here to let you know.

Obviously, I appreciate the kindness and interest of people following my posts here and elsewhere, including Twitter, where I occasionally post as WilliamBain7.

Finally, thanks to all for the interest shown, including comments on Google Plus.

Continued best wishes to all!

universals

wire

wire

                        “I can hear the signs breaking up”

                                               —John Ashbery, Breezeway

technetronic branches torn cleanly

some trees snapped mid-trunk

evidence the force of the winds

the tortoise however

had taken a shorter route

along the river bank

just after the fork

persona

persona

drought into the marshes the

remainder                   spotlights

out of the myths what a figure

sudden anemone

a fastness of color transparence

pierrot on a tightrope

hangnail sway

i can take my hat off

i can take my hat off

a pounding hart or rustling in the torn summer leaves

ships passing in the night

for that matter the day

the tanist at their young paranoiar

patterns of leaves falling

counter-transference

free-wheeling collages image for the outline thing